Sometimes there are workarounds (supported or not) for these types of limitations which are not advertised to the general public, so despite having read the information on the vodafone website I thought I would ask the question to see if anyone had first hand knowledge.

Yeah I do anecdotally -- my flatmates on vodafone have had the same or worse results than me on telecom over the years. Both are marginal, but telecom seems slightly better. I have not done any scientific testing (ie same handset/radio swapping sims out) to verify which is worse, as both are not great where I live.

Regardless you kinda need to be at certain locations on my property to make/receive calls. My fixed-line internet on the other hand is now first class. So if I were able to buy a device to make my mobile coverage better with vodafone, it would make a move to vodafone more appealing.

It is with that sort of scenario in mind that VF brought this product to NZ. My parents live in the middle of Auckland where the coverage at the top of their long drive is perfect go down the hill into the valley and it is pretty poor.

I'm a bit surprised you need to be on a vodafone connection to use it as I assume that you still pay vodafone mobile for any services you use via the femtocell. Maybe its for technical/security reasons.

I wasn't aware of the rural broadband thing (I assume they are talking about mobile broadband?) but it seems to exclude where I am anyway.

blair003: I'm a bit surprised you need to be on a vodafone connection to use it as I assume that you still pay vodafone mobile for any services you use via the femtocell. Maybe its for technical/security reasons.

Yeah it's understandable they would specifcy that as a requirement if they have to support it. But thats exactly why I asked here. I'm kinda interested in what the VPN solution would look like, but getting the impression its not worth the trouble.

Yeah the possible switch to vodafone which prompted the question has come about because we use telstraclear at work and obviously they have been using vodafone for mobile for a couple of years. But whether or not the vodafone->TCL deal goes through (I'm sure it will) I can't switch to TCL at home for VDSL so that doesn't really help.